As Jon Bon Jovi once said, no bride is an island…

As we enter the final countdown to the wedding (25 days!), I often find myself musing on this “Ask Team Practical” discussion, The Loneliest Bride (when I have the mental capacity for musing; there are some days all I’m capable of is wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments).

Part of this is just that I decided to make three major life changes all at once, and I’m working so much that I have time for nothing else. My stress level is at an all-time high. This was dumb on my part, but sometimes life just turns out that way.

But I truly am lonely. Unlike the writer of that APW question, perhaps, I’m realizing that I’m truly lonely apart from the wedding, and the wedding is magnifying that to levels of sometimes overwhelming sadness.

First of all, my engagement started with (and was the cause of) the loss of a friend. Because of whom I picked for my husband, one of my (I thought) closest friends stopped speaking to me. I didn’t expect this. I knew she wouldn’t be happy with my choice, but I naively believed that because I loved her with all my heart and would always continue to be her friend, no matter what her choices, that she felt the same about me. When we planned our hypothetical weddings together in our early 20s, we were supposed to be each other’s bridesmaids. Now she won’t even be there. Should we ever repair the friendship, there will be no way to go back in time for her to attend my wedding. That loss will always be felt.

There’s no way for me to explain in words how deep this wound is. It hurts constantly.

And with each RSVP of no, each person who, however kindly, tells me that they’ve prioritized something else higher than my wedding, I get lonelier.

I think what it boils down to is that my wedding just isn’t as important to anyone else as it is to me. No one tells you that about wedding planning. And let’s face it, even if they did, you’d shrug them off, believing YOUR friends and YOUR wedding are the lovely, special exceptions to every wedding planning rule.

But here’s how I feel:

I’d like to take out an ad in the New York Times (or, you know, a paper my friends actually read), or a billboard, or something equally large and prestigious, that reads, “In case you didn’t know, I’m going through a huge, momentous life change. This is both joyous and hard. I’m feeling both overwhelming happiness and panic at the same time. I need your smiles to mirror my joy. I need your hand to grasp when the enormity of this choice feels like a weight on my chest, and I can hardly breathe. I need to know that you’ll listen to me, that I will have your undivided attention, when I need it. Most of all, I need to feel that I am important to you, that my wedding is important to you (although, yes, I realize it is not the MOST important thing to you: you’ve got your own stuff). I just need you to be there. And I want you to know that I AM HERE FOR YOU. No matter how busy and stressful my life, I always have time to share in your joys. No matter how happy I may be, I will always be your shoulder to cry on.”